I got out to the van carrying her before I remembered it was full of cats and dogs, and then I remembered I could store them. As I did so, her brother looked on in amazement. “Wow! So you do have superpowers!” The boy got more from his father than from his mother. Brown skin from a black father with short cut hair, he and his sister looked nothing alike.
“Yeah, the animal storage one is new, and I forgot to use it.” We’re about ten minutes away from the mansion when her mom finally wakes up. As she was in the back with her son, she started screaming. “Where are you taking us!?” I looked over at Melissa as I asked. “I thought you were going to explain it to your mom?” She looked sheepish as she told me. “Yeah, just about you being a superhero from the future. I thought we were going to wait until the last day to move us all to the mansion.”
I sigh before letting her know. “I’ll explain everything to you once we get there. Just stay calm, and if the flood doesn’t hit, then you can go home and live your life there. If we go with your plan to have your new boyfriend show up at the house, something bad happens, which I can’t say in front of a child.” I talked with Alex as we went, as he barely cared what was happening and was more interested in my power.
“Well, it’s not that great for fighting. I can store things, my other power is better for fighting.” “Oh? What’s your other power?” “It’s… If you get a power, don’t go telling everyone. Since you’re my girlfriend's brother, I’ll tell you. I can manipulate bones.” “That sounds cool!” I float out a small bone as I shape it into a pair of brass knuckles with bone spikes for him to hold. “Can you not hand my son a weapon, please? We’re in a rickety old van, he might hurt himself.”
I dull the spikes into bone nubs so he couldn’t hurt himself. “There you go, not sharp now, and I was just trying to show off in front of my future step-brother.” Melissa had her face in her hands as the thought of us getting married embarrassed her. Her mother kept making snarky remarks towards me. I was fine with that, at least she stopped screaming.
“Alright, we’re getting close.” I pulled up to the gate and was let inside. The sight of packages being moved inside while other trucks were unloading different things made it clear that we were preparing for the long haul. It made my point as I put my money where my mouth was by spending tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars… Well, not my money, but the point still stood.
Vicky came running up to us. “Hello, you three. It’s good to finally meet you. Come with me, Mel, we have some things to talk about.” Vicky dragged Melissa away as I told Alex. “The game room is over there. I think they have GTA 6 if you’ve ever played that.” He went running off while I led her to the kitchen. “So… The apocalypse. What do you want to know?”
“Why did we have to leave the house? Does something happen to it?” I breathe in as this is going to be pretty unbelievable. “You’re old husband, Melissa’s father, fled Canada and showed up looking to stay with you.” Her eyes went wide at what I said as I continued. “He sees your boyfriend there and gets mad enough to try and attack you. Your boyfriend kills him and then panics over the murder he committed.”
Once again, her eyes widened even further as what I said sank in, and she tried to poke holes in what I said. “He’s so sure of going to jail that he stops caring about the law and starts molesting your daughter. There is a virus that spreads through the water, and your son gets sick. There’s nothing you can do about it, so he passes away. Then, once the rain stops in a month, your boyfriend forces the three of you out of the house, and then you die from the melon-sized hail that starts shortly after the rain stops… Do you want to know what else your daughter went through that first timeline, or should I stop?”
She started crying when I told her that her son had died. She and her boyfriend had begun talking about him staying for the flood already, as she didn’t doubt what I said. She only asked. “Is… Is there a way to save him?” I pull out the two vials of different colors. “Enhancement liquid here works like a cure… It’ll make it impossible for him to ever develop a power, though. This power activation liquid would give him a fifty/fifty chance of developing a power or dying.”
She tried to grab the enhancement liquid before I stopped her. “There is a method, but it isn’t completely safe. He could die, but the odds are much better than fifty/fifty for survival.” She reached for the enhancement liquid again, like it would save her son the moment she came in contact with it. I had to stop her again. “Stop! Sit down, there’s no reason to use it on him until he gets sick anyway.”
I have to tell her the reality of the future. “I put them down on the table before putting my hand on the enhancement liquid. “This will save him. It will also enhance him and make him about twice as strong as a normal human, but do you want to know how normal humans are treated in the future? They’re treated like cattle. The men are forced to work hard, back-breaking jobs that put them in constant danger, and the non-powered women are used as sexual outlets for the men of the area.”
I grab both and hold them up, showing them off again. “Before you pick the safe option, you should know that you might be dooming him to an absolutely miserable life in the future if you do. Or, you can hear me out on the second option.”
Tears streaked down her face as the reality began to set in. The world was going to change, and it would change so rapidly that people with values like hers wouldn’t be able to change fast enough to stay alive. This gated area might be able to let people live like kings while they lived here, but how many could it support? A hundred? A thousand? When there are tens of thousands, if not millions, outside wanting a piece of paradise, I might not be able to hold the community from being overrun.
She spoke with a defeated tone. “Fine… I’ll hear you out… I just… If anything happened to him, I wouldn’t know what to do.” I put the vials back into my storage as I explained the process. She looked scared, but the method was far safer than just taking the power activation liquid. It wasn’t until the seventh or eighth year that people found out about the method, and by then, most normal humans were dead or deemed not worth giving powers to. Compared to a powered person who had years to grow their power, only those close to the leader of a community could give their non-powered loved ones a chance at not being treated like second-class citizens.
“Right now, we don’t have to worry. He might not get sick this time around because he’s in a different spot that might not get hit by the flood.” Melissa and Vicky came in as I kept talking to her. They saw the terrible shape she was in, but neither interrupted me. This needed to be done; we couldn’t have someone not on board with the plan to live here with us. Chapters first released on NoveI-Fire.ɴet
Smiling, I mention. “Well. We can try it first on Vicky before we do the method on Alex, after you see how it’s done.” She grabbed a banana off the table as she feigned outrage. “Hey! Don’t go making choices for me without me knowing what it’s about… What are you talking about?”